Yamaha VL7 for sale - Why is eBay so cruel ?!?!?

Picture taken from this auction.

These don't come up very often, in fact I've seen sales for hens teeth and rocking horse shit more often than these.

Yamaha's VL synths were it's inital foray into physical modelling. The first model was the legendary, and even more rare, VP1....



This was a 16 note polyphonic physical modelling synth with free running oscillators. Only three were made, allegedly, and it was never officially released. The VL's were the commercial versions and the VL1...



....was the daddy. The VL7 was a trimmed back and slightly more affordable version, and the VL-70m was the 1/2U module, that has become increasingly popular with users of wind MIDI controllers. Sadly, none of the commercial models featured the massive 16 note polyphony of the VP1, at best you had a duophonic mode. This isn't a bad thing, but even with Korg's Z1, I don't think that we've had anything that comes close to the VP1's power.

More info via fellow blogger, DVDBORN.

And more details Here.

Sadly, Yamaha left the VL range behind, focusing more on analog modelling and analog emulation in a decade where it was more important to some to recreate 303's and 808's than push new sonic boundaries.

Carbon111, of Synthwire fame, has a VL7. Lucky Bastard !! ;o)